Swimming Technique?

[Brent]

Question; do you guys not think too much emphasis is placed on swimming as good cross training for surfing?

The reason why I ask is this - regardless of how often you go surfing, ultimately your ability to surf is determined by two things only
1) your ability to pop-up fast & in one smooth motion
2) your ability to paddle really hard for 2-4 seconds in order to catch the wave.

Why do some crank out lap after lap in a freshwater pool when saltwater surfing is an interval-type sport anyway? Why do endurance training when surfing is not really an endurance sport? Think about it -you paddle out the back...and then you sit there for 5 mins or so, you make an extreme explosive effort to catch a wave, ride it for 20 secs and then you do it all over again - that's not an endurance sport in my books. That's doing intervals.

Why don't more irregular surfers do weights? I've been doing them for years to complement my surfing, concentrating on bench press/upper back, shoulders, lower back exercises, lats etc & lots of work on torso/ab strength. It takes less time, is more lifestyle inclusive than staring at the bottom of a pool for hours per week.

If you were surfing daily then fitness would be taken care of anyway, but if you're a weekender or similar, it's better to be muscle strong in your upper body & able to adapt easily - rather than swim fit & generally muscle weak.

make sense?
ps - you still have to be a reasonable swimmer - that's a water safety issue & different from what I'm talking about above.

[Brent]

And on paddle gloves, we all tried these in the late 80's; they're crap & for surfing they don't work. You 'over-gear' your shoulders and you cannot move your hands fast enough in the water. The feeling is like getting on a ten speed & putting it in top gear and trying to ride away from a standstill.
If you are able to move them in the water ok - you'll get sore shoulders & risk straining the ligiments & doing rotator injuries. Your shoulders & arms were not designed to have paddles attached.

You never see any good surfers using them do you?

[surferdude_scarborough]

have to agree with the paddling gloves. your arms produce a certain amount of energy so putting webbed golves on aint gonna make you any quicker. just make sure ur hands are flat for paddling

[thawkwood]

A combination of swimming and pushups also helps with popups, try swimming 100-200 meters then do twenty to fifty pushups and then get back in and repeat the cycle of interval swim and pushups for about five or so times.

[Patrick__69]

Im not talking about Webbed gloves for surfing I meant them for training while I swim. I also do strength workouts as well from the book Fit To Surf. Thanks for the advice.

[GowerCharger]

when i was out of shape and needed to get paddle fit again i spent a lot of time at the pool training on flat days, basically doing high intensity interval training, doing 50m or 100m sprints and taking only a short break in bettween, Time yourself (most pools have those big clocks for just that) and make sure youre not slowing down your sprints as you get tired and not lengthening your breaks. As you get fitter you can try and get your 100m times faster and take shorter breaks. Done correctly this type of training really messes you up sometimes to the point where your vomiting after and cant walk properly but i find it best simulates the sort of work done while surfing and you only need short amounts of it for it to be effective (30-45 minutes in the pool is more than enough to tire you out).

I tried thinking of ways that could evn better simulate surfing for training but all i could come up with was doing push ups in between sprints and i dunno what the pool lifeguards would think of me getting out every 100m and doing press ups on the poolside,

[thawkwood]

Tell them to sod off and that you're training to join 22 SAS.

[CloudBreak]

Paddling pool!!

[Surf Smurf]

You guys should try Dynoswim for swim workouts.

[Surf Smurf]

Sorry at Dynoswim(dot)com